This is the city: Los Angeles, California. I work here. I'm an ex-mayor. Los Angeles is a magnet for people from all over the world. Some of them run for public office. Inevitably some of them stray from the golden rule and rule for those that have the gold. That's when I go to work. My name is Yorty. I'm a dead pol.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Where You Can Get "Affordable Housing"

Yesterday a non-profit housing group, concerned only with the public interest, issued a list of locations where "affordable housing" is available.

The group, called the National Association of Home Builders, announced that Indianapolis, Indiana, is the most affordable place to live in the entire nation:

"In the nation’s most affordable major housing market of Indianapolis, 87.4 percent of homes sold in the second quarter were affordable to families earning the area’s median household income of $65,100. The median sales price of all homes sold in Indianapolis during that time was $120,000, which is up from $113,000 in the previous quarter and equivalent to the median sales price for Indianapolis homes sold in the final quarter of 2005."

You say you don't want to move to the home of the Brickyard? No problem! You have options:

"Also near the top of the list for affordable major metros this time around were Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Mich.; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa., in that order."

So the next time someone starts whining about how expensive it is to live here, tell him to buy a bus ticket to Detroit. Housing costs more here because more people want to live here than in Livonia. The high housing prices reflect not a failure of public policy, but the basic laws of supply and demand. We've got the climate and the beach.

Anonymous or not, 8:16 has a point. Detroit, Buffalo, and Youngstown aren't known to be prosperous communities with plentiful employment. People come to L.A. because we have a strong economy, and that's a good thing.

Mr. Moore, I don't think any of us MS readers take issue with your opposition to the affordable housing bond. In fact, I haven't read one comment on this site that says the bond is a good idea. However, a lot of us take issue with your constant denial that housing affordability is an issue in L.A. that deserves the attention of policy makers.

Politics should be about leadership and solving problems, not burying our collective heads in the sand and calling agencies like the L.A. Housing Department "liars." We all see that homelessness and housing affordability impact the long-term viability of our city. If the housing bond isn't the right solution, what is?

Telling people to move somewhere else isn't a solution. It reflects your obvious contempt for the citizens you wish to serve. We want a Mayor who listens to our concerns and tries to make the city better, not one who tells us to leave town if we're not happy. I think you need to change your tone.

Unless you have the day off, shouldn't you, as a City employee, be doing less blogging and more working?

As for your vote, I won't count on it, okay? You don't have to keep telling me you want a more upbeat candidate. You are welcome to vote for the happiest, sunshine-iest guy who promises you everything.

Meanwhile, I'm not going to sit silently by while career politicians and special interests try to con voters. They say they want "affordable housing," but what they really want is to build, build build, because that's how they make money.

So because we have sunshine and a great climate, we have a responsibility to provide a cheap apartment or house for every Tom, Dick and Harriet who wants to move here and "make it big in show business?"

If a housing bond is the solution, what has the government been doing with the REST of the money we've been sending them all these years? And what have YOU been doing, oh City Planners, all of these years to help ensure that we have appropriate levels of housing stock for all who need it?

For example - there's rent control in Santa Monica. There are Mercedeses and other expensive cars parked outside most rent-controlled buildings. What happens when people who don't NEED to have rent-controlled apartments are taking them up instead of housing themselves at levels they can afford? What happens to the people who can ONLY afford rent-controlled housing?

So for years, Santa Monica has been taxing developers and forcing them to create lower-rent units for people who don't need them.

The only game in this town is build, build, build! Walter is right about that one.

However, who are they 'building', building', building for? Unless you're talking about the 150 new schools scheduled to be built for all the anchor babies, who, in their right mind, is going to be able to afford even the smallest dump in this city?

The Mexicans can only afford it if they have 10 or 20 in a single dwelling.

The gentrification of downtown LA is a joke because NO ONE wants to be there after dark. It's great for a 9-5 job, but that's it!

Rents are out of orbit! I'm getting $2000/mo for my rentals in south central...1000sf, 3 bed., 1 bath little houses. In the worst neightborhoods imaginable.

Out of curisity, I looked at some $500,000 new homes in the Palmdale/Lancaster area. I was shocked at the workmanship! Crooked walls and floors, uneven molding, bad mitering, horrible tile work, etc. etc. I wouldn't touch one of those "bargains"!

And I wouldn't pay over $1,000,000 for a 1200sq 50 year old dump in Mar Vista, either.

Thankfully, I have owned my properties for over 35 years and still have Prop 13. But I would never, never pay 800,000 for a dump that cost 20,000 35 years ago.

LA is blighted and is on it's way to being the next Bombay or Calcutta.

As a Real Estate agent who has clearly made enough money off of the spike in property values to sit around in his pyjamas blogging all day, Walter's comments on this subject should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

Also, Mr. Glaser, you should have realized by now that the comments on this blog DO NOT reflect public opinion in the City.

For example, most blog postings and many responses on here are totally anti-Mexican, while the City as a whole voted overwhelmingly to put Villaraigosa into office (NOT Walter Moore!).

What happens when you have affordable housins is you get the low life, lazy ass people moving in because its the law. They cause blight and trash the nice places. Ask any of the new tenants on the developement on Alameda near Union Station. Tenants who paid close to $1 mil for the top floor are complaining cause they moved in "affordable housing" people i.e. homeless druggies on the 4th floor and now are bringing in their friends sleeping in the hallways and its going to hell. Why should we as taxpayers help those who are too damn lazy and clean to care about where they live?

I don't think the Mexicans in City Hall understand the meaning of "Pride of Ownership". All of these Mestizos in City Hall grew up in the Mexican barrios and they don't have a clue as to the American Way.

Culture follows race, and these Mexicans in City Hall and Sacramento are nothing more than pigs with earrings. They brought their filthy culture with them and now we have to spend all of our energy getting rid of them.

They have no respect for property or anything else. They are a third world culture and mentality.

One says I should be ignored because I'm a rich broker who made a fortune through real estate. Another says I should be ignored because I'm a failed businessman who married his way into real estate! (And neither is right!)

This, class, is what we call an argumentem ad hominem, and not a particularly good one! When people are unable to come up with arguments on the merits, they instead attack their opponent personally, hoping to distract everyone from the fact that they have nothing significant to say!

Two bits of advice, my young, Listermint-stip fetching staffers: i) get a life; and ii) get back to work.

This affordable housing debate is crap. How many social programs do we have to have? What is wrong with renting for a few years. Housing prices are dropping. Buckle down, save your money, and be ready to buy a home when it hits bottom.

Mitch Glaser IS doing his job - which is more than I can say for you, asshole. He's an urban planner. Just a tiny part of his job is to take into account the people he's making those urban plans for.

Since you can't shut your pie hole about telling people who can't afford to live here to just get the hell out, I have an extremely important question for you although I'm sure you'll dodge it.

How much did your home cost? And how much was your salary at that time? And was anyone else paying for the home i.e., wife, partner, etc.; if so, how much was their income? In my office we have a bet that your salary was quite decent when compared with the cost of your home at that time. Every economist in the country has said the reason for the housing crisis in places like SF, NY & LA is the disparity between wages & home cost. Of course, the wage problem lies squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans who are determined to suppress wages while ensuring their CEO contributors gross more in pay and stock options than the gross national debt of Uruguay.

But I can hear your answer to the wage-suppression issue, too, Walter. "If you don't like the pay, quit the job!" "If you can't afford to live here, move" "If you have no job and no home, put a gun in your mouth"...guns being the one thing you & your buddies back unconditionally.

People want rent control because they want to be able to drive Mercedes. The average person can't really afford one, but what you drive is so important here that they lock into rent control, LEASE the Mercedes they can't afford and try to look cool. That is their business though.